After a month of solo programming at a company, I began to feel tired, get burned out, lonely, and frustrated every time I encountered blockers.
So decided to make a deliberate request on the Slack channel for a coding partner. Shortly after, Nwosu, Chidiadi Emmanuel accepted the request.
I am super excited today that during the remote pair programming sessions we had, I was able to make tremendous progress with my daily and weekly tasks. Therefore today, I would like to highlight some of the benefits that contributed to this progress and how remote pair programming with Nwosu, Chidiadi Emmanuel has helped me get better.
1. Constant feedback:
Before pair programming with Chidi, I felt lonely because I was doing research, brainstorming, testing, implementing, etc. alone. Constant feedback was something I benefited from because he provided feedback about the quality of my code and offered different perspectives that helped me improve.
2. Reduced frustration:
They say two heads think better than one, and that shared sorrow is half sorrow. I experienced a reduction in frustration by over half each time I got stuck with a problem. I no longer had to face the problem alone as Chidi was there to help work on the problem with me in real-time.
3. Increased focus:
During our remote pair-programming sessions, we had agreed upon a standard to always share our screens and microphones. Due to this standard, I found it really hard to get distracted by social media. Also, the people who were physically around me also hardly interrupted me since they all respected that I was in a virtual meeting with someone, compared to when I solo program.
4. Social interaction:
After a period of pair programming with my coding partner, we become good friends and a daily source of support with other programming projects outside the scope of the tasks we were meant to work on. During our short breaks, instead of staying silent, we talked and shared tech-related opportunities and offered sincere feedback meant to help each other maintain consistency and become better programmers.
5. Accountability:
We also had a pre-arranged, recurring schedule as coding partners. That way, we were able to hold each other accountable and make sure that we showed up every time.
6. Collaborative skills:
I have been able to master the art of collaboration and communication. I learned to take out my personal preferences and bias. I learned to get rid of my ego while pair programming. I learned to communicate better, respect boundaries and overlook offenses and focus on the goal and purpose of the collaboration
7. Mentorship:
The best part for me was the chance we had to learn from each other.
Nwosu, Chidiadi Emmanuel is a passionate programmer. Understanding, and implementing concepts are one of his major strengths. He is punctual to meetings. Although very reserved he is always willing to mentor and be mentored